Chapter 1178. It Was an Insult to Death Itself

Chapter 1178: 1178. It Was an Insult to Death Itself

The echo of the final punch did not merely fade; it convulsed. It rolled through the domain in overlapping waves of displaced air, bouncing off impossible geometries that should not have produced sound at all.

Beneath that dying rumble, the great fissure splitting the pulsing violet floor screamed in silence, spiderwebbing outward in slow, deliberate branches less like breaking stone and more like a malignant organism claiming territory.

Rex lay entombed in the center of the wreckage his own momentum had carved. What remained of him was a grotesque parody of human anatomy.

Through a jagged tear in his shirt, the pale, splintered edge of a rib punched outward through the skin, white and obscene against the crimson ruin of his chest.

Blood didn’t merely trickle from his mouth; it flowed in a steady, rhythmic pulse, pooling beneath his jaw and spreading across the violet surface in a dark, viscous stain that refused to be absorbed, sitting atop the floor like spilled oil.

His left arm lay twisted at an impossible angle, the radius and ulna having snapped beneath the skin to create a sickening bulge that defied every natural joint.

Crack.

A wet, grinding sound erupted from the center of the carnage.

Underneath the carnage, quieter now but infinitely more terrifying, the sound persisted. It had softened from the full, unrestrained bark of earlier into something more primal, a series of ragged, wet exhales.

Each breath was a battle against the copper tide rising in his throat, forcing blood to bubble past his lips in a frothy crimson foam.

Hhhhk grah hhhk.

rhythm was mechanical, relentless, and utterly wrong.

Apollo Brightsoul stood frozen, his own chest heaving, the magical residue of his last spell still crackling like dying embers around his fingertips. His eyes were locked on that twitching, broken form.

’Why won’t he just stay down?’ Apollo thought, his pulse hammering against his eardrums like a war drum. ’I felt the bone shatter...’

’I felt the impact liquefy the organs...’

’By every law of flesh and spirit, he should be meat...’

’So why is he still breathing?’

A droplet of sweat rolled down Apollo’s temple, stinging his eye, but he couldn’t blink. He couldn’t move.

The tension in the air was so thick it felt like breathing mercury. Every time Rex’s lungs wheezed, the violet floor seemed to shudder in sympathy.

"Finish it," Apollo whispered, his voice cracking, barely audible over the wet rasp of Rex’s breathing. "Just die, damn you."

But Rex didn’t die. Instead, a clawed hand’s fingernails, torn to bloody stumps, scraped against the violet stone.

Skreeeeee.

The sound set Apollo’s teeth on edge. The broken man’s fingers curled, seeking purchase in the cracks of the domain.

Shhhhh, tchk.

The sound of grinding bone shifting inside Rex’s mangled arm echoed through the void. Rex’s head lolled to the side, eyes unfocused and bloodshot, staring at nothing, yet his body seemed to be coiled like a spring made of broken glass.

The sheer stubbornness of his survival was more violent than any spell Apollo had cast. It was an insult to death itself.

Apollo’s fingers began to glow again, not with the controlled elegance of his earlier magic, but with a desperate, flickering desperation. The air began to hum with static, the violet floor reacting to the spike in his volatile mana.

"I’ll break what’s left," Apollo hissed through clenched teeth, his knuckles whitening as he prepared to unleash another torrent of celestial energy. "I’ll grind you into dust."

Yet, even as he prepared the strike, Apollo’s inner mind screamed a warning. The rhythm of Rex’s breathing hadn’t changed.

It wasn’t the sound of a dying man clinging to life; it was the sound of a predator waiting for the moment to snap.

Far above the carnage of the domain, suspended in a corridor that neither man occupied anymore, the war bled on a mindless, grinding machine of meat and metal that continued its work without regard for the two titans fighting in the void below.

The sudden disappearance of Apollo Brightsoul and the masked figure had carved a disorienting wound into the center of the battlefield. It was a tactical vacuum, a hole in the shape of two legendary combatants that left both armies staggering like drunkards in a storm.

On the Aethelgard side, the chain of command didn’t just fracture; it shattered.

"Press the advantage!" shrieked Commander Valerius, his face flushed crimson with desperation. "They’re gone!"

"Their leadership has evaporated!"

"Hold the line, you fool!" another commander roared back, the sound of steel clashing against steel punctuating his rage. "We cannot advance without knowing where the enemy’s reserves lie!"

"Someone make a fucking call!" a third screamed, his voice cracking as he watched his soldiers hesitate, trapped between the terror of the unknown and the instinct to attack.

In the chaos of this indecision, Captain Dessin Farrow saw not opportunity but a chance to salvage his honor. His heart hammered against his ribs. "Thisthis is it," the moment where we break them, and he made the call that would haunt the survivors.

"Forward! For Aethelgard!"

"Close the gap!" Farrow bellowed, drawing his blade. "Push into the space where Xerollion stood! Now!"

Forty soldiers, driven by a cocktail of adrenaline and false hope, surged forward. They charged into the empty space where the Underlayer’s leader had stood moments before, their boots thundering against the stone.

They covered fifteen meters before the trap snapped shut.

It wasn’t a collapse; it was a surgical strike.

Gorvasha’s reserve formation didn’t panic; they flowed. Like black mercury pouring into a crack, her forces folded around Farrow’s advancing line from both flanks.

The maneuver was so precise, so devastatingly smooth, that it felt as though the Underlayer had been rehearsing this exact slaughter since the moment the fighting resumed.

CRUNCH.

The wet slap of steel meeting flesh drowned out the sound of breaking bones. The advance was slaughtered in seconds.

Twenty-two of the forty men were butchered where they stood, their screams cut short by crossbow bolts and the vicious sweep of demonic blades. Farrow himself felt the wind of a massive axe as it whistled toward his skull. Sssshhhhk, but he only survived because a private, a girl barely twenty who had been trembling moments before, threw herself bodily into the path of the blade.

The axe bit deep into her shoulder, the sound of her clavicle snapping echoing like a dry branch breaking, but she died buying him three seconds of life.

"Fall back!" Farrow screamed, but there was no one left to follow.

The gap had become a grave.

On the Underlayer side, however, the chaos was nonexistent. There was no hesitation, no panicked shouting, only the cold, terrifying precision of practiced violence.

Cassandra Vexmoor stepped into the vacuum left by the violet spiral the instant it closed. Her presence was like an anchor in a hurricane.

When she spoke, her voice didn’t need to carry; it commanded the very air to still.

"Hold the kill zone formation," she commanded.

Her tone was flat, devoid of emotion, carrying the absolute authority of someone who had commanded legions long before these men drew their first breath. "Nobody breaks position!"

"Not one step forward, not one step back."

The soldiers around her froze mid-motion, their blades lowering to hold the defensive posture.

"He will be back," Cassandra continued, her eyes fixed on the spot where the dimension had torn open, "and when he returns, this corridor needs to look exactly the way he left it."

"We do not waste blood on lesser prey."

A few hundred yards down the line, Gorvasha mirrored the discipline.

"Hold formation!" she barked to her own section, her massive warhammer already mid-swing.

WHAM.

The hammer connected with an Aethelgard soldier’s chest cavity, sending ribs splintering outward in a spray of crimson as she repelled another desperate advance.

The confusion that had briefly threatened to paralyze the demon ranks had been severed cleanly by the two women at the helm. As the Aethelgard forces recoiled from the slaughter Farrow had invited, the corridor’s defensive structure held firm.

The Underlayer’s line remained unbroken, a wall of iron and malice waiting patiently for the storm to return.